Surf's up on Kingston quartet's new recording

Three years ago, guitarist Adam Weaver, a veteran of assorted indie bands around Kingston, found himself with some leftover guitar riffs, surf guitar riffs, and he felt compelled to do something with them. So he decided to put a new band together.

"I thought I would take these people from different musical backgrounds and kind of merge it all together and see how it sounded," Weaver said. "And it sounded surprisingly good."

Those people were guitarist Chris Wood, bassist Steve Sottile and drummer Aidan Campbell, and their musical backgrounds ranged from garage rock to rhythm and blues to prog rock. Together they would form The Huaraches — who celebrate the release their second recording, Steal Second, tonight at The Toucan — and the resulting sound was instrumental surf-punk, music that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Quentin Tarantino movie.

"And once we sort of had those riffs, we started all bringing other stuff in, applying our own ideas to it, and sort of got a formula, I guess, from that," Weaver said.

The band’s sound echoes more recent surf-rock bands such as Shadowy Men on Shadowy Planet (they’re the band responsible for the Kids in the Hall theme) and Man or Astro-Man, Weaver said, than Dick Dale or the Beach Boys.

"I think the thing that might separate us a little bit from your traditional ‘surf’ is I don’t see us as having a lead player, that sort of clean, quick-picking, really melodic idea of the guitar god backed up by a rhythm section. That’s not us," Sottile explained. "We consciously play with bringing elements of melody and trying to drive the song without a singer, and without a true lead player we rely on the interaction between the four of us to kind of move the songs along. And that’s conscious."

Wood, who listened to traditional surf music during his decade living in southern California, used to host a surf-themed radio show on CFRC, and was excited to sign up when approached by Weaver, whom he knew from the radio station. The surf-music genre is alive and well, he feels.

"It’s still kind of an underground thing; it’s a really niche market, but I love it," he said.

"I think people are still really into it, it’s just that there are no lyrics, so people are kind of like, ‘Where’s all the singing?’ "

The absence of a singer for the band has been a topic of many conversations.

"The singer thing came up a bunch of times with us when we first started, especially people wondered that we didn’t have a singer, and things like that," Weaver said. "Maybe that made us dig in our heels a little bit more after that, I don’t know."

To keep its live shows lively, and without the typical frontman to engage the audience, the band tried a few different things — limbo contests for one, screening movies in the background for another — to make the show more engaging. In the end, they settled on having two luchador mask-sporting dancers bookending the band onstage.

"Also, not being tied to microphones, necessarily, allows the rest of the band to sort of put on a high-energy thing," he continued. "I sort of like to think of it as a we-don’t-let-up, James Brown meets The Ramones channelled through surf and go-at-the-audience sort of thing."

The Huaraches were surprised to find that there are a number of like-minded genre bands in the area between Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.

"I think we’ve found that there’s been a lot more, in the last couple of years, bands that have sort of that genre and that community that have sort of been coalescing over the last couple of years, and the bands are starting to find each other, play with each other, and get along really well," Weaver said. "It’s been really good because a lot of those other bands have been very receptive to us."

That other bands are dabbling in the same genre is encouraging, Wood said.

"I’m excited by the fact that there are a lot of people still playing it, and younger," he offered. "It means that people still dig that sound, and still want to play it. I think it’s awesome."

And it turned out The Huaraches had some unexpected fans.

"We’re getting airplay in the southern States, in California, in Argentina, and Japan, and Germany," Sottile said. "There are people buying our records and playing them on the radio. How did it happen? I don’t know. You put it out there on the Internet, and I think because we’re in this niche, we got picked up a little bit. It’s so surprising that now we have fans we never would have had."

Even though the band is releasing its second album, don’t expect the members to quit their day jobs any time soon.

"As much as we would love to be able to hit America and Canada as a touring band, the reality of your 30s, unfortunately, dictate otherwise," Weaver said.

Still, the band would like to play as many shows as they can within the three-city triangle.

"From my perspective, if we can keep playing, put out another album or two a year and pay it off through the shows we’re able to play, if we can do that, I really like playing with these guys. That’s a goal in and of itself — is just to keep doing it."

peter.hendra@sunmedia.ca Twitter.com/petehendra

The Huaraches

What: Instrumental surf punkers The Huaraches hold a release party for their second album, Stealing Second, along with guest Cap’n Footbags and The Evil Streaks.